


Night Breezes

by coffeeandchocolate



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-06 02:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13401504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeandchocolate/pseuds/coffeeandchocolate
Summary: When you can take away a person's worst memories, a lot of people come to ask you to do just that. Five people Sonya Simonson never met, and two she did.





	1. Laura

**Author's Note:**

> I miss Sonya. Therefore, Sonya fic!

A lot of people came to see her, once word of her powers started to spread in certain circles. People with their own memories that they wanted to forget.

She’d ask if they wanted to talk before she did anything. Often, they didn’t. She swore they’d have anonymity, but while they were apparently desperate enough to trust her with their minds, they were usually too afraid to open up to her. Sometimes they changed their mind over a cup of tea and fled the cramped office. Sometimes, as now, they stayed.

“It probably won’t work,” the girl mused, blowing on her tea to cool it down. She was younger than most of the people that came to see Sonya, maybe eleven or twelve. Too young to have memories she was this desperate to forget. So young that it made Sonya’s heart hurt.

“Oh?” she said. “Do you think so?”

The girl shrugged, shoulders hunched protectively, feet pulled up onto her chair and arms wrapped around her knees. “Accelerated healing.”

Sonya pursed her lips and blew out a breath. “That shouldn’t have an impact. It’s worked on people with that ability before.”

The girl tensed even more.

“What’s your –” Sonya cut herself off and rephrased.

“Will you tell me your name?” she asked instead, biting back the _sweetie_ that instinct wanted to tack onto the end. The girl hesitated, glancing quickly up into Sonya’s eyes, before looking away into the depths of her empty cup.

“Laura,” she said at last.

“Laura,” Sonya repeated and smiled gently at her. “You want to forget something enough to come to me about it, but my ability to make you forget scares you, huh?”

The girl’s arms tightened around her knees. “That’s not it. Just…take a look.”

Sonya started at the invitation. That amount of trust…it would be enormous for anyone, but especially for this child, alone and closed off and seemingly terrified. “Are you sure you want me to do that?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You’ll see.”

And so, Sonya did.

She sucked back her smoke almost as quickly as she’d exhaled it, mouth partially opening in horrified shock. She blinked back the tears that had sprung to her eyes and tried desperately to compose herself, to look at Laura with anything other than pity. It didn’t seem to matter – Laura wasn’t even looking at her.

“If you take away everything bad, what’s left?”

Sonya swallowed hard. _God._ She took a moment to compose herself before answering.

“How about I give you a happy memory instead?” she ventured. “Would you like that?”

“A happy memory?” Laura echoed. “You can do that?”

Sonya nodded, and the sheer longing on Laura’s face took her breath away.

“Close your eyes,” she murmured, and even though Laura tensed even more at the instruction, she obeyed.

Soyna blew gently once more, passing the memory over with as much care as she could – the whisper of piano echoing through the room, the warmth of the fire on her limbs, the sweetness of the hot chocolate in her mouth.

She finished painting the memory to life, and whispered, “Good luck.”


	2. Emma

“Make it go away,” the woman said, cradling her teacup but not drinking any of it. “I’ll pay you anything, just take it away.”

Sonya surveyed her. Her blonde hair had been pulled out of her beautiful face into a sleek ponytail, showing off the long earrings. Her tailored black jacket and white blouse both looked expensive, and her makeup had been painstakingly applied, but Sonya could still see the dark circles under her eyes betraying her lack of sleep, the trembling of her hands, hear the minute catches in her breathing.

The woman gritted her teeth. “I can’t wipe my own mind. I could wipe yours, anyone’s, but not mine. All this power, and I can’t use it when I need it.”

“What do you want me to take away?”

“Genosha,” the woman said. She set down her cup precisely in the corner of Sonya’s desk, then met Sonya’s gaze. Her eyes were a pale, wintery blue. “The Sentinel attack.”

That stare intensified, and Sonya found herself unable to break eye contact. The office melted away.

_She was surrounded by rubble and corpses, in the middle of a dying island, kneeling and digging through the wreckage with diamond fingers, hands shaking too hard for anything close to efficiency, choking on the ashes, unearthing body after body, but no survivors. Screams and sobs rang in her ears. Real or just some figment of her imagination? The here and now, or just memories? There had to be others alive…_

_She continued to dig._

And she was back, sitting in the chair she had never actually left, heart rate elevated, stomach rolling, bile rising in her throat, hands gripping the edge of her desk for dear life. She took a few deep breaths and managed not to vomit.

She reached across the table with unsteady hands for the other woman’s untouched tea. She took a sip.

“Okay,” she said, bracing herself. She nodded, more to herself than to the woman across the table from her. “I can help with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Emma gonna show up in season two? I need her.


	3. Logan

She took a sip of her cocktail and let out a deep sigh. It had been a long week, between work, volunteering, and classes. She dragged a hand through her hair, tugging out the pins and letting it fall freely over her face.

Someone dropped into the seat next to her and ordered a beer. She ignored him, focusing on her drink. That didn’t last long.

“Hi. Sonya, right?”

Sonya tensed and turned slowly to face him, still gripping her glass. It was one thing for people to approach her at the shelter. But this? At some bar she didn’t even frequent often? That was unsettling.

The man was short and stocky, arms well muscled and hair sticking up. Certainly no one she knew.

“How do you know my name?” she said, half ready to bolt, but vaguely proud that the nervousness hadn’t come through in her voice. _Please don’t be a Purifier._

Metal claws slid from his knuckles. She jumped.

“Relax,” he said, showing them to her, as if waving a weapon around was supposed to make her feel better. But then, as if in response to her earlier thoughts – “I’m a mutant, too.”

She swallowed and waited for him to continue.

“I hear you can mess with people’s memories,” he said. Sonya tightened her grip on her glass, urge to flee intensifying. The man seemed to notice – he scooted back a little. She breathed a little easier.

“Something you want to forget?”

He shook his head. “Remember.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you guys miss Sonya? I miss Sonya.


	4. Scott

A knock on the door frame startled her out of her work, and she looked up from her papers to see a man, a little older than her and vaguely familiar looking, paused in the doorway.

She tensed, but only for an instant before her mind processed the sight. A man with red sunglasses, standing awkwardly in the office of a shelter for battered women, but not holding a weapon, not looking angry, just tentatively waiting for her to say something. Tall, strong, but not dangerous. She hoped.

She put a smile on her face. “Hi, can I help you with something?”

He cleared his throat. Swallowed. “I…are you Sonya?”

She nodded. He stepped forward to fully enter the office, giving her a better look at him in the process. She scrutinized him more closely.

He was unshaven and gaunt, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see past the opaque lenses. He hovered by the door, standing, not taking the step and a half to sit down across from her. His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. “Someone told me you can…can help me forget.”

“Yes,” she said, looking past him into the hall. No one was walking by. She looked back at him. “What do you want to forget?”

He hesitated, tensing up. His head twitched, just a little, making her suspect he was glancing over at the door behind him and contemplating bolting. Strange. What could it be, that he was afraid –  _ashamed?_ – to say?

She wished she could see his eyes.

“My wife,” he said at last. “She died last month, and I – I don’t…know how to live without her.”

She stilled, eyes widening.

“Not forever,” he hastened to say. “I just need…”

Sonya had been unnerved when the man had entered her office, and the vague sense of something not being right only intensified. She studied him for a moment, a niggling feeling itching at the back of her head, something that she should know that was just out of reach.

“I just…” he repeated, trailing off again. He edged closer, into a beam of sunlight. His glasses glinted red. Something clicked, and Sonya sucked in a breath through her teeth.

“My God,” she said. “You’re Cyclops.”

The man started.

“It’s okay,” she soothed. “I won’t…tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He gave a jerky nod, and she braced herself before asking carefully, “What exactly did you come here for?”

“An hour,” he said after a pause. “I want to lie to myself for an hour.”

She felt a pang of misgivings in the pit of her stomach. She helped people run away from their pasts. That was what she did. Whether it was healthy or not, whether it would help them in the long run, she set that aside, because she could ease their pain, could help them in the moment, could give them something. But this…

This was downright destructive. Undeniably so.

“What are you asking for?” she asked, voice barely audible. The man steeled himself, then looked at her.

“Give me a dream.”

“A dream?” she repeated even more softly, and he nodded.

“An hour. Where – where she’s alive, and we’re happy, and never heard of mutants or the X-Men or any of it. I have to…I have to say goodbye.”

She couldn’t see his eyes, but could imagine – wide, pleading, desperate.

She had never been able to resist a call for help.

“Okay,” she said at last. “Lock the door and tell me what you want.”


	5. Madelyne

“I’m Maddie,” the woman said, unusually relaxed. She was a pretty redhead with an easy smile and confident poise that looked completely out of place in the shabby, grim surroundings. “So, you’re a mutant, huh? Memory manipulation?”

Despite herself, Sonya flinched.

She was used to people knowing who she was. Word of mouth had passed along the secret of her mutation to similar people all over the city, those that needed her and those that didn’t, like a whisper on the wind – a rumour, a substantiated legend. _Her name is Sonya, and she’ll help._

But there was something unsettling about someone knowing she was a mutant, seeing it, without having heard said rumour.

Maddie tapped her temple conspiratorially, smiling a little as she leaned into whisper, “Telepath.”

Sonya’s unease lifted a little, but didn’t completely vanish. She did her best to hide it – probably pointless, when she was sitting across from a telepath, but it made her feel better all the same.

“So, you want a memory taken away?” she asked, and Maddie blinked rather amusingly, as if even telepathy hadn’t been enough to make her anticipate Sonya’s assumption. Sonya realized only belatedly that that would be unlikely, if Maddie hadn’t known about her mutation before walking in.

“No, of course not,” Maddie said. “And I’m not looking to stay here, either.”

_Huh._

Mutants came to the shelter often enough, but few of them knew _she_ was one as well. Those few usually came to her with a specific request in mind. If the others noticed, they didn’t say. _Don’t ask, don’t tell_.

Sonya frowned, confused. “Are you looking to volunteer, then? Because I think you’d have to sign up with someone that works here.”

Maddie shook her head, and Sonya’s frown deepened. “So, what _do_ you need?”

“I think I’m being watched.”

“A boyfriend? Husband?”

Maddie shook her head, a little wistfully, then bit her lip with a quick, anxious glance at the door, showing some tension for the first time. “I might just be being paranoid, but I think…there are Purifiers or something after me. For obvious reasons, I don’t want to call the cops. I heard this was a mutant friendly shelter and thought…I thought maybe you’d know what I should do.”

Sonya thought about it.

Just a few months before, a mutant she’d helped had given her an address to go to if she ever needed a place to go. Maddie might not be trying to escape from someone she knew, but there could very well be people after her, and it was better safe than sorry. Sonya might not be able to help with that particular problem…but she definitely knew how to get in touch with people who could.

“There’s a bar,” she said slowly. She plucked a Post-It from the stack on her desk and scribbled down the name, passing it to Maddie. “A primarily mutant bar. Talk to the bartender. He’s part of the mutant underground. I think they’ll be able to help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was unsure about writing this, and I restarted a bunch of times, and tried a few different characters, because I thought this was out of character for Maddie, but then I thought, what the hell even _is_ in character for her? Girl's like the poster child for character derailment. If anyone has any strong feelings about her, please weigh in.


	6. Lorna and John

The two slid into the opposite side of the booth. The woman flagged down the waiter and gestured for her mug to be filled. Sonya just blinked at them.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” she asked. The woman raised her eyebrows and flashed her a sharp grin. She drew circles with her pinky above her mug, stirring her coffee with her spoon without touching it.

“Just a couple of freaks,” she said. “Same as you.”

“Ah.” Sonya relaxed, pulling her own mug towards her. “I see. You’re with the underground.”

The woman’s smile softened a little, and she inclined her head to Sonya in a way that looked approving. “Got it in one.”

The man leaned forward. He was very handsome, Sonya noted, dark hair a little shaggy and pulled out of his face in a short ponytail, eyes intense and face serious. “You’re the one that’s been sending mutants our way.”

She shrugged. “I volunteer at a shelter. Mutants do tend to be victims of abuse more often than they are perpetrators. You give them a place to go.”

It was his turn to smile, as if he liked the answer. “Well, thank you. We appreciate it.”

She waved it off, a little embarrassed, taking a sip of coffee to avoid looking at them.

“I’m Lorna,” the woman said. “This is John. Let’s talk.”


End file.
